By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO, April 28 (Reuters) - The CEO of Norway's $2.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, urged companies on Tuesday to use artificial intelligence to "lift everybody up" and not just to cut jobs, warning that layoffs risked fuelling a backlash.
The fund, which invests Norway's oil and gas revenues, is one of the world's biggest investors, owning on average 1.5% of all listed stocks across about 7,200 companies globally, alongside other assets.
Large U.S. companies have
announced layoffs this year as they streamline operations amid growing use of AI tools. Concern is rising that AI could drive mass unemployment, prompting policymakers to weigh the economic and political consequences.
"I'm surprised by people who basically use it only to take out costs," Nicolai Tangen said in an interview at the fund's offices in Oslo. "Because people are not stupid. They don't particularly want to make themselves unemployed. So it's not an incentive to integrate it."
"That's the way we should think about it as a society as well. We're not using this to lay off people. We're using it to make societies more productive, more efficient, and to lift everybody up in a more social democratic manner."
Tangen is an enthusiastic proponent of AI and has previously said he is not planning layoffs at the fund, where about half of its 700 employees code their own AI tools.
"Instead, why don't you use it to become more productive and gain market share? You are going to make adoption faster and easier for yourself ... and you are going to make it easier for society so we don't get this total backlash against something that is really, really positive," he said.
'EUROPE IS THE OPPOSITE OF TECHNOLOGY'
Europe could be a leader in AI applications if political leaders delivered clearer top-down messaging, Tangen said, but it has a long way to go.
"Europe is the opposite of technology ... because the large technologies are in the U.S.," he said. "Europe has a lot of things going for it. We are highly educated people. We are highly digitalised. We've got a lot of data. And we could be leading here if we used it in the right way."
The fund is among Europe's biggest investors, but the region's share of its total investments has fallen, partly as European companies have failed to match the huge growth of U.S. technology firms.
About 24.8% of the fund's investments are in Europe, down from 39% a decade ago, according to fund data.
Earlier this year, the fund urged Europe to "get its act together" on unifying capital markets, including harmonising financial and corporate rules and promoting competition and innovation.
Since then, Tangen said there had been some "constructive attitudes", but added that "I am not sure there's a lot of stuff happening".
"There are so many different interests, so many different people in groups who've got their particular interests in mind, and that's probably holding back the development," he said, adding that delays would make reforms harder.
SERVICE PROVIDERS
Some Norwegian politicians - though not fund officials or the government - have voiced unease about the fund's heavy exposure to the U.S., which accounts for more than half of its investments, as the Trump administration adopts a more muscular approach to asserting U.S. power.
Tangen said he would welcome more global service provider options, noting that there were few alternatives to U.S. companies and, in his view, no European choices at present.
For cost and efficiency, the fund uses a single cloud provider, Amazon's AWS, and a single global custodian, Citibank. But for resilience it would be good to have alternatives, Tangen and Deputy CEO Trond Grande said.
"There aren't many options today ... but it is something we have on our radar. We want to make sure we have a resilient chain of service providers," Grande said.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo. Editing by Mark Potter)
